6 Things We Learned at Digital Summit Denver
6.28.19 | Kevin Stoll & Kelsi Carlson
At Inline Media we are always working to stay ahead of the evolving media landscape, whether through building and maintaining relationships with media partners, reading and following the latest industry news, or researching changes in consumer behavior and emerging technology. This week, Digital Summit Denver was right in our backyard, and we were excited to attend. Here are some of our key takeaways from the event’s Master Classes, and good reminders of how to integrate Paid Media strategy with Owned and Earned Media channels.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) for Content Marketers
1. Role of a Content Landing Page: as paid media experts we have many tools at our disposal to drive qualified and strategic traffic to a website, but once the traffic is there it is up to the website to convert those site visitors into sales, enrollments, registrations, etc. For the best user experience and conversion rates, the Content Landing Page should give visitors the information they were promised before entering the website, and make it clear what their next step should be via a well-labeled Call-To-Action (CTA).
2. How to Present an Offer: equally as important as what the CTA is asking a visitor to do, is how the visitor is asked. Marketers have plenty of options to choose from here, as a CTA may be placed at the top of the screen above the content to catch the most eyeballs, at the bottom of the screen to ensure only the most qualified and engaged readers convert, within the content itself, or a combination of these and other options. An effective CTA strategy may also include providing separate incentives as remarketing efforts, or trying to intercept users before they exit the page.
3. Optimizing Content: finally, with multiple content pieces in market and a CTA strategy defined, it is imperative to define the value of conversions on the website and optimize towards which content pieces are driving the strongest ROI. This can and should be tracked back to online and offline paid media sources and help in developing an actionable attribution model to inform better campaign optimizations.
Advanced Social Media Marketing
4. Finding Your Voice in a Competitive Landscape: as with Paid Media, Owned Social should be tailored to reach the right audience with the right message, but it’s likely competitive brands are also trying to reach that same audience. With Paid Media, we can develop strategies to buy around and avoid competitive clutter. With Owned social channels, however, it is likely that your desired audience also follows your competitors’ social feeds. In writing social content, it is important to study the competitive landscape and stay true to a voice, tone, look & feel that stay true to your brand identity, but also stand out from the competition.
5. Platform-Specific Content: one of the most prevalent trends in consumer behavior today is the increasing demand for video content, but the same video content will not succeed everywhere. In developing content for social it is important to remember the unique atmosphere and audience behavior within each social platform and develop content with these differences in mind. Social users in general prefer marketing content that is either educational, inspirational, or entertaining, but the ideal length and format changes dramatically between platforms.
6. Build Testing Strategy Into Content Playbook: any Owned Social strategy should start with a content delivery calendar, making sure to plan content around significant promotions or campaigns. In taking this a step further, plan to also include testing opportunities to gauge audience engagement against different content categories. We regularly employ tracking pixels and use conversion strategies to measure the ROI of Paid Social campaigns, but the same can be applied to Owned as well to better understand what content is making the greatest impact.